What A Blessing She Had Chloroform recounts the contours of the medical and social response to the pain of childbirth over the last 200 years. This topic has been the subject of a number of important but less specialized studies, including works by Judith Walzer Leavitt, Martin S. Pernick, and Margarete Sandeloski. Unfortunately, Donald Caton does not build upon these earlier works in any significant way. Rather, he retells a familiar story, but mostly through the lens of the physician.